An American friend insisted on this kidnap movie, about a guy and his cousin nabbing a pharma CEO (Emma Stone). It sounded a bit like a rehash of Rearview Mirror (1984). I was utterly wrong. This is a positive mind-fuck of a movie, second only to The Substance (2024).

By Emad Aysha
It's equal parts satire, paranoia, gore and science fiction. The opening sequence shows the main semi-protagonist, Teddy (Jesse Plemons), beekeeping and telling his stupid cousin, Don (Aidan Delbis), about the declining bee population and who is really responsible.

Not humans, of course, destroying the habitat and using persistent pesticides, along with world governments and mega-corporations. No, it's aliens. It has to be!

Straight away, I drew sci-fi parallels, such as “The Black Stone” by Yuri Medvedev. Here, a creative artist struggles to find that initial spark once again, only to encounter an alien life form that eventually mimics humanity.

Towards the end of the story, you realise this is all satire, since he complains about pollution and the desecration of the planet – something a son of the earth could never do. Then the artist notices that he has no pulse, concluding that he’s a ‘heartless’ alien himself.

Not coincidentally, the artist was living in his cabin in the hills, desperately trying to finish a painting of a lonely tree in the woods. That’s what I thought was happening here, with the lonely loser Teddy blaming Emma Stone for everything wrong with his life.

UNEARTHLY HUMANITY: Emma Stone as a sexy, confident, 'single' businesswoman that also wants to give something back. Obviously an extraterrestrial!

There are parallels between the two, living alone, exercising and checking what they eat. And Teddy works in her company, and his mother is sick with an illness only her pharma-corp can cure, using her instead as a guinea pig for failed drugs.

Not to mention firing all his friends. Don is his only friend and follows him like a dog; Teddy tells him that his sex drive is what allows the aliens to monitor his thoughts.

Later, you find his mom is the one who poisoned his mind with this alien paranoia, blaming corporations for poisoning her with their food. (He also got sexually molested by his male babysitter, who later becomes an intrusive cop!)

Teddy also doesn’t watch television (mainstream media) and filters all his information through social media, from like-minded sources. He’s the quintessential Gen Zer, a guy who makes the original paranoia of Generation X in the 1990s look like sanity. And that’s no small feat, the era of The Matrix and The X-Files.

At least that generation believed in science as a way out. This guy sees scientists as gatekeepers who psychoanalyse people like him as hollow echo chambers; a combination of cultists with the social media brigade.

It’s a new Dark Age, as Clifford D. Simak predicted in his novel Time Is the Simplest Thing (1961); check out this online Tucson Hard Science-SF discussion. The long-term culprit here, however, is ‘French’ postmodernism, if you remember Eden and After.

Teddy also believes in demons in parallel dimensions, yet another favourite of the conspiracy brigade in postmodernist America. The upshot is he actually has a love-hate relationship with these so-called Andromedan aliens.

He tells Don that even if Emma Stone isn’t an alien, she’s still evil, as a CEO, and when he convinces himself she’s royalty, he invites her to a civilised dinner. (He gives her a dress belonging to his mother; his father dumped her and him).

Teddy always remembers his mother floating up into the air, a saintly, angelic figure to him, which is what Emma Stone also represents with this alien mythology. And both he and Don want to get on board the mothership.

Teddy even hesitates at first to torture her, although you find out afterwards that he dismembered a whole bunch of other ‘suspects’.

DISEASED MINDS: Alicia Silverstone [left] plays the proverbial 'mothership' of the protagonistic nutjob Teddy (Jesse Plemons).

Emma Stone plays along with this madness, especially after getting electrocuted, promising Don to take him and Teddy wherever she goes. He blows his own brains out, and then she tells Teddy that her aliens have been here since the dinosaurs.

They accidentally wiped out that race and tried to replace them with mammals modelled on themselves, humans, on the island world of Atlantis. Only the humans rebelled against these god-like aliens and bred a nastier version of themselves who devolved into apes, then re-evolved into modern man.

The aliens were trying to isolate and eliminate the evil genes in this bloodline. She adds that his sad, mad mother is a genetic experiment.

She finally tricks him into taking her back to her office, where there is a teleportation machine that will fulfil all his dreams. Interestingly, he hides his shotgun in his pants to get inside and is also strapped with explosives. (Hint, hint!)

Then he blows up inside her closet, the supposed telepod. You’d think the movie is over, but there’s a full moon, the date Teddy said the alien ship is coming, and that’s when you get the real surprise. He was right all along!

The upshot is that the aliens are actually benign. The story she fed him about trying to free humans of their evil impulses was actually true. But it’s too late. Humanity is a lost cause.

Teddy, being a beekeeper, is no mere coincidence; a motif of the caretaker cop who tortures to protect the defenceless, like the US hegemon post-9/11.

AMERICAN ABDUCTEE: Did I mention that Lee Remick was the abductee in 'Rearview Mirror'? The original queen bee!

We close with the same sequence of bees and flowers. (Teddy describes pollination as less messy than sex, so he clearly has ‘issues’ in the bedroom). The animals survive the termination of life, with the humans being the true mindless drones.

This makes Emma Stone the actual beekeeper. The Andormedans themselves are racially diverse, like her employer's practices as a CEO. (Check out the aliens in The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension [1984].)

The performances throughout are zany but natural, down to the blush effects. The subjective focus of the camerawork (Petzval Effect) and the beefy colour palette really bring this out, as does the music.

Emma Stone is perfectly cast with her grey-alien looks, bug-eyed and pale-skinned. Her teleportation resembles childbirth – being born again and shedding her selfish humanity.

Oh, and the crazy mom is played by Alicia Silverstone, a 1990s teenage heartthrob. I miss Generation X already!!